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Hello, my name is Amanda Cruz Morales. I am nineteen, I graduated from highschool in 2021. I was born in Puerto Rico but my family and I moved to Florida when I was about six to seven months old. I was raised in south florida for as long i can remember. My Miami Dade College Campus is currently Homestead Campus. It's closer to me and many of my friends are there as well to start off. My current major is political science, it may seem very boring to others and to others it may seem like why politics? Well, I really do like to learn and learn about politics so I understand more about our government and ways to help others in my community. My goal is to graduate from Miami Dade with my associates and to go to a university and continue working on my major. What is most important to me is making sure my loved ones are safe and healthy. My family and friends are important to me because when I am going through something they always help me out.I would like to see myself in the future being happy, living the best life, and being the best version of myself. So, I believe my strengths is that I am always willing to learn and I pay attention but my weaknesses are that I can be lazy sometimes (most of the time). And I am proud of myself for being as far as I am now because not many people can.

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The research tool, idea, or methodology that was known to me but was good to listen to again is research. Reason being because research can make or break your paper. Since this is still my first year of college, I am still getting use to expending the amount of sources I use for research. It was great to know more about the research tools and services Miami Dade gives and how helpful it is when it comes to doing research papers. I am greatful for professor Isabel for going more indepth and explaining how useful the research tools and services are.

The topic I selected to research is "Overdevelopment and poor city planning". From my nineteen years of living in Souht Florida, I have seen how over populated it has become. And with that comes the poor city planning and overdevelopment with it. Many people come to Florida, mainly Miami, for the beach, clubs, healthcare, and many more. With that comes more houses, building, the need to build more highways, and etc. And to make things worse, Florida is below sea levels, Florida can be underwater as early as the year 2050. Miami is not built for the amount of people that move here. People look as Miami as a place to vaction but are looking over the fact that many people are homeless, the streets are full of potholes, houses are rundown or not up to par, and so much more.

Work Citied:

- Personal Experience

- Joshua Partlow, Darryl Fears, Jim Morrison, Jon Swaine, and Caroline Anders, June 25, 2021, The Washington Post "Before condo collapse, rising seas long pressured Miami coastal properties" https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/06/25/rising-sea-levels-condo-collapse/

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Chani Nir's family were among the first ones out of the Miami-Dade condo building after it collapsed on June 24. She feels lucky to be alive. (Video: James Cornsilk, Drea Cornejo/The Washington Post)

The 12-story condominium tower that crashed down early Thursday near Miami Beach was built on reclaimed wetlands and is perched on a barrier island facing an ocean that has risen about a foot in the past century because of climate change.
10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint
Underneath its foundation is sand and organic fill - over a plateau of porous limestone - brought in from the bay after the mangroves were deforested. The fill sinks naturally, and the subsidence worsens as the water table rises.

Investigators are just beginning to try to unravel what caused the Champlain Towers South to collapse into a heap of rubble, leaving at least 159 people missing as of Friday. Experts on sea-level rise and climate change caution that it is too soon to speculate whether rising seas helped destabilize the oceanfront structure. The 40-year-old building was relatively new compared with others on its stretch of beach in the town of Surfside.

But it is already clear that South Florida has been on the front lines of sea-level rise and that the effects of climate change on the infrastructure of the region - from septic systems to aquifers to shoreline erosion - will be a management problem for years.

The Champlain Towers South building was recently found to have been sinking in the 1990s and may have continued to sink since then, according to Shimon Wdowinski, a professor at Florida International University's department of earth and environment who has studied the area.

Wdowinski co-wrote a paper published in April 2020 that said satellite imagery showed a 12-story condominium building in the eastern part of the Miami Beach area had sunk by about two millimeters per year between 1993 and 1999. Wdowinski said in an interview Thursday that it was the Champlain Towers South building.

"I was shocked to see it collapsed," Wdowinski said.

Land subsidence is a gradual settling or sudden sinking of the surface when material that supports it is displaced or removed, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Erosion and the disappearance of groundwater are two of several factors that cause it.

Wdowinski, whose findings were first reported by USA Today, cautioned that it was not clear whether the subsidence he found was connected to the building's collapse.

"It appears to be something very localized to one building, so I would think the problem was more likely to be related to the building itself," he said.

The roof on the 136-unit building was being replaced and other repairs were planned, according to an attorney for the condominium association, Kenneth Direktor. He said the building was "thoroughly inspected" recently as part of a process in which buildings in Surfside must be recertified every 40 years and that the report on the inspection had been completed.

"There was nothing in the report that would have indicated a life-safety concern," Direktor said.

Jim McGuinness, Surfside's building official, said the city was aware that the report was close to being completed but that officials were still awaiting its submission.

Miami and nearby beach communities have experienced substantial sea-level rise, up to 12 inches over the past century, according to some estimates.

That includes nearly six inches since the mid-1990s, according to a Capital Weather Gang analysis of federal data. That has led to a 320 percent jump in nuisance flooding in the area over the past 23 years.

According to a new storm-water master plan released by the city of Miami in April, it would have to spend nearly $4 billion over the next 40 years to protect the city from floods that result from sea-level rise.

The money would be spent on six-foot-high sea walls, massive underground pipes and wells to control a rapid influx of water. Regardless of how much the city spends, some residents would have to retreat from areas that cannot be protected from flooding.

The porous limestone underneath Miami allows the rising seas to filter up through the ground, causing flooding during high tides even on sunny days. The groundwater surge threatens freshwater supplies and septic systems, which are already failing in Miami-Dade County.

The mix of swelling groundwater and tidal cycles juiced by climate change means coastal buildings and their concrete foundations spend more time in water than they did in the past, said Albert Slap, the chief executive of RiskFootprint, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based company that assesses buildings' vulnerability to hazards such as storm surge and flooding.

"This is a tragic, devastating event, and it could be a canary-in-the-coal-mine-type event," he said. "It's not just one building. This could be something that could affect other buildings."

Slap noted that many coastal structures built on sand that have underground parking lots already rely on around-the-clock sump pumps to keep out groundwater.

"The groundwater enters the pores of the concrete and ultimately weakens it and erodes it," he said. "So the foundations are subject to a lot of geological forces that could compact the soil underneath. It could cause voids. We just don't know."

Video from the scene of the collapse showed rescue workers in the basement parking garage working in knee-deep water, although the source of that water was unclear.

Rescue crews working the basement parking garage at Champlain Towers. "Firefighters continue working on locating possible victims, while dealing with heavy damage and changing conditions in the parking garage." #SurfsideBuildingCollapse pic.twitter.com/vdK97esKKN
- Parker Branton (@ParkerBranton) June 24, 2021

Harold R. Wanless, a professor at the University of Miami and an expert on sea-level rise, cautioned that there are too many other possible explanations for the building collapse to speculate whether sea-level rise played a role in the tragedy. But investigators need to get to the bottom of that, he said.

"We've got to find out what it is," he said, "because it makes living or working in high-rises very unattractive right now. Why did this happen?"

Wanless said the area of the collapse in Surfside was still a few feet above normal sea level. One of the possibilities that must be taken into consideration is whether a sinkhole or some type of collapse happened under the building, he said, but he added that the area has not been known for sinkholes.

"About 20 feet down is limestone, but that's not an area that has had any sinkholes that I'm aware of," he said.

A search of the Florida Geologic Survey's site for sinkhole reports in the area of the building's address on Collins Avenue yields no results. Unlike Miami, which is more prone to sinkholes, Miami Beach is an area where the FGS says "sinkholes are few, shallow, of small diameter and develop gradually."

"There's no reason for this building to go down like that, unless someone literally pulls out the supports from underneath, or they get washed out, or there's a sinkhole or something like that, because it just went down," Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said at a news conference Thursday morning.

Another Surfside official, Commissioner Eliana R. Salzhauer, also questioned whether the land underneath the building had been compromised.

"I think this is all tied to sea-level rise and our overdevelopment," she said. "And Mother Earth comes back, and the ocean comes back, and takes it."

Miami has also long suffered from "king tides," higher-than-normal tides caused by alignments of the sun and moon that have been exacerbated by rising sea levels from melting glaciers and polar ice. These tides, which tend to be strongest in the fall, have routinely caused flooding in the city.

The Army Corps of Engineers recently proposed a $6 billion sea wall up to 20 feet high running six miles along the coast to protect against storm surge. It would not cover Surfside, nor would it protect from tidal flooding elsewhere in the city.
Tim Craig contributed to this report.
Miami-Dade condo collapse: The latest coverage
Latest: Visual investigation: Video, images and interviews deepen questions about role of pool deck in condo collapse Demolition crews wrapping up preparations to topple what's left of collapsed Florida condo
Exclusive: Majority of Florida condo board quit in 2019 as squabbling residents dragged out plans for repairs

Floor by floor map: The shattered lives of Champlain Towers South

FAQ: What you need to know as the search for survivors continues | Video timeline: How it happened

'They were on their balconies, screaming': The crucial minutes before and after collapse

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Before condo collapse, rising seas long pressured Miami coastal properties

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Placeholder while article actions load The 12-story condominium tower that crashed down early Thursday near Miami Beach was built on reclaimed wetlands and is perched on a barrier island facing an ocean that has risen about a foot in the past century because of climate change.

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Michael Mayo, South Florida Sun Sentinel Columnist, “Mayo: Hank if you hate overdevelopment (and are stuck in traffic)”, March 30,2016, https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-traffic-overbuilt-mayocol-b033116-20160330-column.html

My first source is from SunSentinel. It mentions how Florida has become overdeveloped. In this article, it takes place in Boca Raton. But then they stated how there is overdevelopment in South Florida. There is always construction and fixing up something in Florida. When they are doing construction on the roads, the traffic is always backed up.

Mario Alejandro Ariza, Yale Environment 360, “As Miami Keeps Building, Rising Seas Deepen Its Social Divide”, September 29,2020, https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-miami-keeps-building-rising-seas-deepen-its-social-divide

My second article is from Yale Environment. In this article, it talks about how Florida is falling below sea level. The sea level has risen a foot since the 1900s, and almost 5 inches since 1993. At the rate that the sea level has risen, roughly about 800,000 residents in Miami-Dade County would be out of a home or place to live.

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What happens when you place a full-page ad in the newspaper decrying traffic, overdevelopment and density overwhelming our roads? If you're John Gore, a Boca Raton civic activist and former corporate executive who heads BocaBeautiful.org, you listen to your phone ring off the hook all day.

"We're just tapping into people's anger - and that anger is growing by the week," Gore said Wednesday. "We're watching all these enormous concrete-and-glass towers going up, and people are saying, 'How did this happen?' Somebody said to me, 'It's like Dubai has come to Boca.'"

It's not just Boca. The overbuilding-overcrowding angst is rippling throughout South Florida, with new construction melding with repairs and maintenance on existing bridges, roads and pipes to form a noxious stew of gridlock and gritted teeth.

A building boom in downtown Fort Lauderdale and near the Galleria Mall has coincided with bridge replacement on East Sunrise Boulevard, turning the heavily traveled U.S. 1 corridor along that stretch into a nightmare.

New construction on Hollywood's barrier island, including the recently-opened Margaritaville resort, has coincided with a three-month state shutdown of the Dania Beach Boulevard drawbridge. The closure has led to huge backups along A1A and Sheridan Street during the height of snowbird season.

And there's the never-ending drama of Interstate 95, as new plastic poles for the so-called "Lexus lanes" are being installed in coming weeks. Those "variable-priced" toll lanes, which run as high as $11 each way in Miami during rush hour, will soon be going live in south Broward (from the Golden Glades to Interstate 595). Some day, the poles will run all the way to Delray Beach.

I've lived in South Florida nearly 27 years, and the "it's-getting-too-crowded" cry has been a common refrain through the decades.

But now we really mean it. Development and population have grown, but viable mass transit hasn't.

"Some people talk a good game about making this a pedestrian-friendly city, but let's be real," said Gore. "In Boca, we have people who can't walk to the bathroom, much less to Publix."

As high-rises sprout and green space yields to concrete, Gore also has concerns about flooding (especially with rising seas) and aging water mains and sewer systems.

Gore, a Boca resident since 2002, said his group now has 1,500 members and Boca Watch, an allied group, has 11,000. They hope to flex some muscle in next year's city elections by fielding and supporting candidates who want to check unbridled development and take a more measured approach.

"Do you realize what's being built now is LESS THAN HALF of what is planned for the 'new' [Boca] downtown?" read the ad from Gore's group in Tuesday's Sun Sentinel. "The way to avoid future gridlock is relatively simple: EITHER BUILD MORE ROADS OR BUILD LESS BUILDINGS."

Longtime Fort Lauderdale resident Jean Drake said she saw the ad, showed it to some friends and said, "Why didn't we think of doing that?"

Drake, whose father owned a restaurant on Las Olas in the 1930s, wrote me a letter last month voicing skepticism about Fort Lauderdale's proposed Wave streetcar system. Envisioned as part of Fort Lauderdale's denser downtown, the Wave is behind schedule, over budget and will share cramped road space with cars. "We need wider streets or traffic will back up, unable to pass," she wrote.

Over the last few weeks, I've been swapping horror stories with fellow residents about worsening conditions. One endured a three-hour morning drive from Fort Lauderdale to Miami. Another spoke of a commute from Hollywood beach to the airport that now takes 45 minutes instead of 15. Gore told me trips from A1A to I-95 along Boca's major east-west roads have also tripled in duration.

"Instead of the barrier island, we've started calling it the barricaded island," Gore said.

I live on the mainland, but I know the feeling.

As towers keep rising and roads keep clogging, we're all trapped like rats in a maze.

Latest News

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Mayo: Honk if you hate overdevelopment (and are stuck in traffic)

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What happens when you place a full-page ad in the newspaper decrying traffic, overdevelopment and density overwhelming our roads? If you're John Gore, a Boca Raton civic activist and former corporate executive who heads BocaBeautiful.org, you listen to your phone ring off the hook all day.

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So what I think or feel about the action or concept before I had engaged in the activity for SP2 was knowing very little about research tools. I always had an idea or a little concept about how to do research. But going to the training session, I had learned more about what I had already knew. It always great to know more and the many ways on how to get research instead of just using one website and making the rest of the information up. I am beyond grateful for knowing the many researches that Miami Dade gives us online and in person. So the expectations, associations, or assumptions I had about the concept or action before I had completed the activity is the fact that it was going to be easy. I mean yes it was, but I found it more informative. I thought “oh well, this will be easy to understand”. But what helped me out was attending the training session and hearing about other topics that people were choosing. It helped me chose mine and how much I actually stand by it. I didn’t know how passionate I was about how Miami has become over populated and how little prepared we are.

So my experience with the activity CAS2 was a bit personal. One of my family members has Parkinson’s disease. And when I saw that we had the chance to choose stories from “The Whole health Story, In Under 3 Minutes” I took the opportunity to read about it and learn more. What I felt about it was that some patients that have Parkinson disease may be able to dance but some people are not able to get up or move around due to having it. It can not help every patient who has it, only those who are still able to actually do more.

Completing the activity changed how I think or feel about the concept or action for CAS3 is how much we have affected climate change. I already have a strong belief and stand by how we as people have affected climate change. Although yes many people do not believe that it is real, it is very much real. What I learned from the experience is how there are a lot more people who are trying to stop or limit how much we are affecting it but they are not getting recognised. Instead they are not being talked about enough. It changed me as a person by trying to make a difference in how and what I do that will affect the environment.

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"The Story of Stuff" https://www.storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/

When stuff moves from the systems it goes through extraction to production to distribution to consumption to disposal which is called the materials economy. There’s a problem with this, it’s a linear system while we live on a finite planet and we can not run a linear system on a finite planet. This system is missing the people who make it run. With extraction we are cutting down trees, mining through mountains to get metals, we use the water and are taking animals' habitats. In the past three decades one-third of our natural resources have been consumed. The video goes on to talk about how us as people are causing problems with our environment.

"The Story of Bottled Water" https://www.storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-bottled-water/

The city of Cleveland didn’t like how Fiji made a joke about the water, so they decided to do a test. They found out that a bottle of water from Fiji has a lower quality, loses a taste test with Cleveland tap water and it costs thousands of dollars to make. Sometimes bottled water is less balanced than tap water. Bottled water costs 2,000 times more than tap water. The reason why people keep buying bottled water is because of “manufactured demand”. Reason being is because if companies want to keep making money, they have to keep selling more stuff. The video goes on to talk about the effect of bottled water and how to solve the problem.

A.)Consumption related to my role as a global citizen is to give in and help it increase. Everyone understands what their role is as a global citizen and what it includes. We try our best to not use a lot of bad goods to hurt our environment. But, there's always people who still will. By consuming goods, we are “helping” our economy. We see a lot of consumption in our everyday lives. Some examples are buying a new pair of shoes, getting fast food, and getting your house cleaned. We have been taught to partake in consumption at a young age. Consumption can either help our planet/environment or harm us.

B.) The changes that inspire me to make after watching the Story of Stuff videos is how I consume and do with my things. For example, with bottled waters, I will try to use more reusable cups. I know that plastic is harmful to the environment. I want to make sure that our environment is as clean as it can be so the generations after me can see all the amazing things that it has. Reason being is because I feel like we as humans are not doing our job to make sure that we still have resources that we can use in the future. If we use them all up now, we won’t have any when we really need to use it.

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About this film

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

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Movie Resources

Credits

The Story of Stuff was written by Annie Leonard, Louis Fox, and Jonah Sachs, directed by Louis Fox and produced by Free Range Studios. Executive Producers included Tides Foundation and the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption. It was released in December 2007.

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About this film From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns.

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The Whole Health Story, In Under 3 Minutes

Article 1 "This truck is making sure the homeless have clean clothes"

In Denver, Colorado, there are about two laundry trucks in 7-8 locations to offer somewhere where homeless people can clean their clothes. Clean clothes are an important part of someone’s confidence. Homeless people already don’t have a place to stay, money, and much more. So for them to have access to a place for them to wash their clothes means so much to them. Having clean clothes helps people to keep their appointments, have confidence for job interviews, and to fight the huge stigma of homelessness. This will leave such a huge impact on these people's lives knowing that there are people to help them out and that they are not alone.

Article 2 "How dance imrpves the lives of those with Parkinson's disease"

There is a collaboration between a support group and a dance company in New York. The support group is about Parkinson disease. They work together to create a program for people dealing with parkinson. This can help improve physical movement. When people participate, it can give people an increase in self-esteem and cognitive function.

Reflection

My thoughts about the subject is how people can come together and help out. I think it's important for people to come together as a community and help those in need. What I learned from those stories is that not everyone is selfish and there are caring people out there. The subject that was portrayed uniquely through solutions journalism compared to other media is how they stated more facts and actually bring up how this will help them in the long run.

Work Citied:

- Kumasi Aaron, April 24, 2019, Solutions U, “This truck is making sure the homeless have clean clothes” https://solutionsu.solutionsjournalism.org/stories/this-truck-is-making-sure-the-homeless-have-clean-clothes

- Michael Hill, April 17, 2018, Solutions U, “How dance improves the lives of those with Parkinson’s disease” https://solutionsu.solutionsjournalism.org/stories/how-dance-improves-the-lives-of-those-with-parkinson-s-disease-video-njtv-news

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This truck is making sure the homeless have clean clothes

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Video 1:

In this ted talk, the speaker was focusing on how climate change is being a threat to human rights. The speaker was talking about how when she was president of Ireland she did not have to buy land on the mainland of Europe because her citizens could go there since their island was below sea level. When it came to the topic of climate change she didn’t look at it in a scientist or environmental lawyer but as how it was affecting the people. When she saw images of the polar bears and the melting glaciers, she could only imagine how it would affect our human rights. Such as our food, safe water, health, education, and shelter.

Citation:

Mary Robinson, May 2015, Ted Talk, “Why climate change is a threat to human rights?” https://www.ted.com/talks/mary_robinson_why_climate_change_is_a_threat_to_human_rights?referrer=playlist-why_climate_change_is_a_human&autoplay=true

Video 2:

In this ted talk, the speaker is talking about our country will be underwater soon, but we can stop that by working together. The speaker talks about how climate change has been going on for a while. When he went into office in 2003, when he would talk about climate change at the United Nations General Assembly, he wasn’t talking with passion. Since he wasn’t sure if scientists are saying it is being caused by humans or if it was real or not. But when scientist confirmed that it is real, and it is getting worse because of human actions, he knew that we have to try to stop it from getting worse than it is now. He predicted by 2100 the sea levels are going to be three feet.

Citiation:

Anote Tong, October 2015, Ted Talk, “My country will be underwater soon– unless we work together.” https://www.ted.com/talks/anote_tong_my_country_will_be_underwater_soon_unless_we_work_together?referrer=playlist-why_climate_change_is_a_human&autoplay=true

Reflection:

So what I learned from watching these two ted talk videos is how we humans don’t understand what our actions are doing to our environment. We have been making climate change worse and worse throughout the years. I understand that there are people who don’t think it is real and it is all fake. But then complain about how our world is getting worse. We continue to destroy wild animals' habits to make more houses, buildings, and etc. We are creating pollution with gasses and making our water worse by spilling chemicals into the water and throwing plastic into the water and killing animals. We need to come together to stop making it worse. If we work together we can lessen the damage that we cause and future generations can see how beautiful it is. But if we continue to be arrogant and take advantage of what we have now, we can never appreciate what we have.

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Mary Robinson: Why climate change is a threat to human rights

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Climate change is unfair. While rich countries can fight against rising oceans and dying farm fields, poor people around the world are already having their lives upended -- and their human rights threatened -- by killer storms, starvation and the loss of their own lands.